Thread: Ebay Policies Last Straw WARNING: Rant!

i think it is not fair to sellers, ebay policys stink, if you and your wife have worked hard to maintain a store through them they should not do that, i quit selling on ebay because of the high sellers fee's, now i just sell stuff i dont use on different forums. just my 2 cent's worth

I would say people shouldn't worry too much about feedback. It really isn't all that important.

My take on this is that less than perfect feedback is better. Why - because it weeds out the bidders who I wouldn't like to trade with. Yes, that is right, somebody who insists on sellers having perfect 100% feedback before doing business with them is too high of a risk, it means they doesn't understand how things work and have unreasonable expectations - no thanks, i'd rather deal with mature adults.

There are only 2 bidders who determine the final price - the second highest and the highest. Sometimes these two bids are far off the rest of them, but that's a fluctuation that I wouldn't rely on. In virtually all cases loosing a bidder corresponds to no change and rarely at most a couple of dollars lower price. That's not worth worrying.

So no system will be perfect, but for something with so little overhead as the feedback system, I'd say almost everything will work pretty much the same. The whole idea behind selling to complete strangers without seeing and inspecting the items relies on the vast majority of people being reasonable and trusting. Seems to be working quite well.
Perfection may be nice to make me feel good about myself, but from the business side a bit more pragmatic point of view is much better.

And yes I have 1 negative feedback, which was a retaliatory feedback over a $1 item which the scammer (he was later investigated by the police) never sent. I expected the negative and had about 15-20 feedback at the time, yet to me it was a matter of principle to leave correct feedback.

Well considering a lot of eBay sellers would hold feedback hostage until they get their positive feed back, makes me question the persons 100% positive feedback. Like how many times has the seller been due a negative but someone left a positive to keep theirs intact?
As it was said, if your a buyer and only have 30 feedback or whatever 1 negative can really screw you up.

For me, if someones feedback ain't 100% I will check the negative and the sellers feedback to that member and judge whether or not it was just retaliatory, if it was then I probably won't buy off them. Also if its a powerseller or something I expect something to go wrong nothing lasts forever. Oh and finally, if its someone who sells frequently like a few things a week, then I don't judge feedback thats more than 6mths old.

This is just my opinion.

Originally Posted by Bruno

I never put much truck in ebay seller ratings.
Sure, I would not buy from a seller with 13 % positive feedback, but a seller with 1000 sales and 99% positive feedback is the same for me as 100%.

What I'v always found unfair was that sellers refuse to leave feedabck before I left mine. WTF?
As long as I pay on time, they should leave feedback because my end of the deal is fulfilled.

Instead they wait for my feedback, and then pay back in kind.

I had an auction not to long ago where I sold two ink cartridges on ebay. The customer paid very quickly and I left positive feedback. Shortly thereafter the SOB started making up stories about 1 cartridge being empty, and another spilling out before he could use it. He accused me of selling refilled cartridges. I agreed to give the SOB a refund to avoid a long drawnout affair with Paypal which I would have eventually lost anyway. So now I wil not leave feedback until the buyer does. I used to always leave positive feedback first.

I beware every seller who has more than a thousand ratings. I've had more problems with busy sellers who don't have time to make sure they aren't selling junk.

I don't make many transactions on eBay anymore. Seller fees keep rising which not only make it hard for me to sell, but this also drives sellers to marginalize quality of service and/or goods to keep up.

Of course, Ebay Australia has brought in a trial of taking away every payment option except for PayPal. Expect it to be implemented in all their sites soon enough.

Originally Posted by jwoods

i think it is not fair to sellers, ebay policys stink, if you and your wife have worked hard to maintain a store through them they should not do that, i quit selling on ebay because of the high sellers fee's, now i just sell stuff i dont use on different forums. just my 2 cent's worth

Nah, it just means no one will have 100% positive feedback.

If you are interested in doing business, it won't mean anything. If your pride is hurt, well, welcome to the real world.

Frankly, as a buyer, I don't care what sellers think of this. I LOVE IT.

If the original poster and his wife have really worked their asses off to maintain a good store, then I am sure I would buy from them if they had a good product. Since NO ONE ELSE ON EBAY WILL HAVE A 100% POSITIVE RATING, THE FACT THAT THEY DON'T WON'T MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE.

If the original poster and his wife close their store in protest, well then, I will buy from someone else on EBAY. I will never leave ebay as a buyer if they keep working like this to serve my needs.

Those sellers who left Ebay are the real joke. Who are they going to sell to?

It's going to get ugly alright. But only for the sellers who leave Ebay.

There was another thread I was reading yesterday that said some sellers are leaving for ecrater.com, onlineauction.com and others. I was looking at selling on ebay until the fee hikes and some issues I've had with sellers posting neg feedback to try and force a mutual withdraw. Talking to ebay about it was worse than talking to my dog, at least he listens. I don't believe that ebay is trying to help anyone but themselves. I understand its a business but they seem to be screwing over their customers.

Bob

Originally Posted by honedright

Ok, I've been very patient with eBay over the last few years that I've had a store with them. I've dealt with their crappy server software glitches, user-UNfriendly listing programs, etc.

But now...

Their new feedback policy has just gone into effect at my store. My wife and I have worked our asses off providing top notch customer service. And for the entire time we've had the store we've maintained a 100% positive feedback rating, until now.

Ebay's new rating calculation counts two neutrals we received, due to slow shipping on the pasrt of the good 'ole USPS, against us. Now our rating is 99.1%!

Now some may say that's still a good rating. But it's still not 100% and that's gold on eBay.

We've refunded customers, sent out duplicate items due to purcahes lost in the mail (yep USPS again), tracked items, etc, etc and now we get dinged for something that wasn't even our fault

No, we haven't complained to eBay yet, but I can almost hear the answer, "We're sorry sir, but a lot of our sellers are unhappy with the new changes...but a 99.1% is still a good rating..." Yada, yada, yada...

So I'm considering canceling our store. If that's the way eBay is going to treat the people who are helping them to make their miilions...well

Anyways, now that that's off my chest, what do you all think?



Scott

Screw-um

I hate shopping on e-bay and I will never sell thoguh them. I'd see what percentage of your sales are atually brought to you through the e-bay system and how many people would have found you through other sources like this board. I'll shop your store wherever it is on the internet, e-bay is no attraction to me.

If your online activities generate more sales than e-bays on your behalf kiss them off they don't deserve your patronage, or anyone else's.

All good points, thank you. That's why I posted, I knew I'd get a wide variety of opinions. Our pride isn't hurt, I think it's just the principle of the thing that got to me, but I'm over that already. Yes it seems a lot of sellers are moving out, but we are staying, at least for now. There is a baby (low overhead, huge customer exposure) in all that dirty bath water after all.


Scott